Shabez Jamal

Donny Bradfield (b. 1992, St. Louis) better known as Shabez Jamal, is an interdisciplinary artist based in New Orleans, LA. His work, rooted in still portraiture, experimental video, and performance, interrogates physical, political, and social-economical space by using queerness, not as a means of speaking about sexuality, but as a catalyst to challenge varying power relations. Often turning the lens on himself, Jamal utilizes self-portraiture as a means of radically redefining the parameters of racial and sexual identity. Jamal received his BIS from the University of Missouri - St. Louis in 2019 and received his MFA from Tulane University in the spring of 2022 where he was also awarded a Mellon Community-Engaged Research Fellowship. In 2020 Jamal was also an inaugural member of Harvard Universities Commonwealth: In the city Fellowship.

In 2017, Jamal along with Rikki Byrd, Danielle McCoy, and Lola Ogbara co-founded Artists In the Room (AIR), a collective founded with the intention to build community among the Black arts community in St. Louis, which includes artists, administrators, critics, and more. Throughout their tenure, they worked with a host of established Black artists who exhibited in the area, such as Mickalene Thomas, Sandford Biggers, and Larry Ossei- Mensah to better serve the St. Louis region through panel discussions, artists' talks, and connecting the artist in the area with resources and opportunities.